Invisible Art

This is a painting by my great grandmother, Annie Eller. She painted it over 100 years ago, and it has finally come down to my posession. It is certainly not the only one, there are quite a few that she did for a few years before she was married, but it is by no means a common object.

Were we not a family that holds onto objects and keeps track of their significance, it is quite possible to imagine this painting, and others, to have ended up in a yard sale, thrift shop or even a dumpster. Does something cease to be a work of art if it is lying in a dumpster? Considering the amount of garbage inspired art these days, it seems like a valid question. Does it only work in one direction? If you bring garbage into the gallery it becomes art while if you throw art away it is still art?

I think so. We are not making judgements about the art itself. Saying, "This artwork is a piece of garbage" is not the same as saying "This piece of garbage was once a work of art." I can't imagine anyone saying the latter and meaning it literally.

At any rate I am saved from having to make this judgement, because not only do I have the piece, but I think it is a great painting. For more of her work you can click here.

Gargoyles

I took this picture from the bathroom of the 8th floor of the painting deapartment at UARTS in Philadelphia. When gargoyles were first made as water spouts on the cathedrals of Gothic Europe, people rarely saw them. They would not have been able to get the vantage point I was able to get.

It is easy to imagine a craftsman, who has received work building towers on the local cathedral, trying not to be bored carving a simple downspout. To show off his skills he carves them into a creature. He knows nobody will see it high in the air. Did he consider it art? Hobby? Utility? A joke?

At any rate, hundreds of years later, the gargoyle is taken down and displayed in a museum. People are fascinated, they pay to see it, they pay for a replica, they show them off in their gardens and book shelves. You can buy gargoyles for the downspouts of your home.

Is this the case of an object becoming art, or an artwork becoming an object?

Ugly Birds

Compared to the last image I posted, this picture can be enough to make a birder gag. Grackle's and Starling's are synonymous with evil to many a bird watcher, pest, vermin, murderer. Perhaps the most damning, "Invasive Species", with it's high brow tone and suggestion of future controlled eradication, is the one most intellectuals have come to resort to.

Starlings were in fact introduced by a true invasive species, mankind. It was part of one man's ill fated plan to have all of the bird species mentioned in Shakespeare living in Central Park. Starlings were perfectly suited to living in their new environment and did not have many of the checks on their population that would have evolved with them in their native territory.

When we see a "successful" human, we do not automatically despise them unless we see their behavior as reprehensible in some sense. Then their sucess becomes another means for us to put them down and revel in their misfortunes. The starling is absolutely a successful species. It also has a lot of behaviors that our moral code deems negative. It is hard to not make judgements about a bird that will crack open the eggs of competitor species in order to gain their territory. But the starling does not have a moral code about these things, unlike we do. We are taught from childhood that it is not acceptable to kill babies so that our enemies will not be able to reproduce. Starlings are simply programmed to do it, it is part of their survival instincts.

Perhaps asking if a work of art could return to the state of a mere object is like asking if a human being could return to the state of a Homo Erectus. Even if we could raise a child to think, act and look like a primitive human, we would carry within us the image of what that creature could have been, should have been. We would write that creatures humanity on top of its behavior and judge it as we do the starlings of the world.

It seems harsh to label animals as mere things, but in the scheme of my premise that is where they fall. Certainly there are many works of art about animals, arguably there are works of art made by animals, but animals are not in themselves works of art.

This cardinal is an example of a creature that shares many of the physical characteristics of an artwork. It has color, shape, contrast and design that are all attractive to the eye. The fact that this evolved in the male bird in order to be attractive to female cardinals should indicate just how close the paths of humans and other animals have taken. The females of no species want to mate with the scrawniest, ugliest, least capable mates, and the males of most tend towards color, speed, strength or territory.

Perhaps art evolved as a way to attract a mate? The ability to make pictures or sculptures showed a creative mind and a creative mind would have been good in a crisis, or to invent new technologies. Can those pictures on cave walls in any way be considered what we call art today? If they were meant to demostrate an individuals abilities, they would have been more like feats of strength, showing off your ability to track game or be accurate with a spear. It would have been showmanship to attract the eye of the most coveted females. Surely art has evolved since then? Or perhaps in this world of gallery representation, collectors and prizes, nothing much has changed.

The cardinal, however, is unselfconscious about it's showiness. For it it is not a matter of pride, but a matter of survival, or propagation. Perhaps that is also something that is a part of art, passing something of the creator along to continue existence past the creative act, past the end of the artist.

Works of Art and Mere Objects

At the beginning of his book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Arthur Danto imagines an exhibit of paintings that all appear to be identical red squares. One is ironically called Red Square after the Russian geographical location, another is a minimalist work, another is meant to represent the "Red Dust World" of Nirvana, and still another is meant to represent the Red Sea after the passing of the Israelites. There is one other item which just happens to be a piece of red painted canvas and is not an artwork at all. The only reason it is included in the exhibit is because of its physical similarities to the actual artworks.

Danto then proceeds to try and answer the question, what is it that the mere object does not have that the art works do have? There is something that works of art have beyond their physical properties that makes them reach the exalted state of art. Even if we decide to declare the the red canvas should be declared an artwork, which we can do, it is now no longer just an object and has somehow gained what the others had all along.

What has been interesting me lately is not so much the difference between them; I'll leave that to Danto and others to work out, but why do we feel that when we have added that thing to the red canvas we have elevated it to the status of art? Was the red painted canvas not already a thing of value to rival the works of art in the show? Were I in the market for a red painted canvas and went to this show to buy such a thing, would I not walk out of there with the mere object because of it's relative value?

So here is the question I am pondering, it is possible to make the red canvas a work of art through some non-physical attribute that we add to it. Is it possible to take an art work and make it back into a mere object? Once we have added that which makes something art, is it ever possible to take it back? Under what circumstances would that be possible?

So in this blog I will be considering works of art and mere objects, what gives them value, what makes them interesting, and what is the line between them.